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Computacenter hires chairman Paypal glitch hits merchants with 12-day headache By Dan Goodin in San Francisco -> More by this author27 May 2008 21:05 Software update gone bad Slashdot Digg del.icio.us Reddit (R) [Printer] [Mobile] PayPal customers are up in arms as a series of fresh glitches cost them time and money. Once again, eBay's inability to accurately say when the problem might be fixed is adding insult to injury. The most serious malfunction affects what's known as the "handling_cart," a feature within the PayPal shopping cart that tacks on custom charges for handling, shipping and other services associated with a particular item. On May 15, it suddenly stopped working. The failure has caused many online merchants to lose money each time they use PayPal to sell items that used the feature. As of Tuesday - 12 days after the glitch began - PayPal's support team was still unable to say when it might be fixed. This ongoing inability to estimate how long the outage will continue is what has ecommerce consultants who work with PayPal especially steamed. Register reader Alan Hatch says he's prepared to work around the problem by removing handling cart fees from a site he maintains, but that will require a God-awful amount of work. "If PayPal said it would be weeks to fix, we'd do this," he said, in an email. "We'd hate to re-price all the shipping and put the coding changes in just before they fix it and have to change it all back, which is why an ETA to fix or some basic information regarding the action they are taking would be very useful." As things stand now, his unnamed client is losing -L-3.95 on every order placed. Countless other merchants who rely on PayPal are also losing money and have taken to this forum to vent a spleen. A PayPal spokesman said the glitch presents itself when merchants use PayPal's Website Payments Standard product and customers reside in another country. "We understand and recognize that for these merchants and their international customers, this is a serious issue," he said. "We apologize for the inconvenience that this is causing to their business. We are working to correct the problem and expect it will be fixed within the next few days." This latest malfunction comes two weeks after a separate meltdown in PayPal's instant notification system made it impossible for many merchants to process international transactions. Making matters worse, the problem caused credit card holders to be billed even though they were unable to take delivery of the goods or services they had purchased. PayPal fixed the problem a few days after it began. Both glitches are said to be caused by a software update PayPal made on May 15. Typically, large-scale upgrades can be rolled back when they're found to result in major glitches. PayPal's inability to do so "is not very confidence-inspiring," Hatch said. In addition to the misbehaving handling cart, some PayPal customers are also reporting their inboxes are being hit by a deluge of confirmation messages. Reg reader Jamie Edwards counted 9,013 confirmations for a single transaction. The irony is that two weeks ago, PayPal was having difficulty sending confirmation emails at all. Now, it's sending thousands of them where one would work just fine. A PayPal spokesman said he was investigating the reports. (R) 25 comments posted -- Post a new comment Huh. Posted: 21:43 27th May 2008 Papal Glitch Posted: 21:49 27th May 2008 Nothing on their site? Posted: 22:14 27th May 2008 Evil Posted: 23:25 27th May 2008 Bloody ridiculous Posted: 00:44 28th May 2008 More comments... Track this type of story as a custom Atom/RSS feed or by email. Related stories Royal Bank of Scotland takes three weeks to squash nasty Worldpay bug (20 May 2008) PayPal meltdown wreaks havoc on some ecommerce websites (17 May 2008) 'Secure' PayPal page is... you guessed it (16 May 2008) The web rip-offs nobody cares about (24 April 2008) eBay ponders Skype bail out (18 April 2008) eBay Australia faces competition probe (17 April 2008) eBay kills live auctions (16 April 2008) eBay forces Aussies to use Paypal (10 April 2008) eBayer invites buyers to rip him off (11 February 2008) PayPal buys Israeli security firm (28 January 2008) eBay's CEO throws in the three kitchen towels in a jute bag - $4.99 (24 January 2008) Previous Article Next Article RSS Feeds Top 20 stories All The Week's Headlines Whitepapers * The Storage Efficiency Quotient and Pillar Axiom * Managing the Performance and Availability of .NET Applications * Traditional Security Systems will not Protect Against All Web-Borne Threats * The Complementarity of Next Generation Networks and Virtualization Projects Breaking Hardware News Intel logo teaser Intel faces long not very hot summer Centrino 2 starts looking like a mirage Intel will leave its OEMs facing a summer drought of new mobile chips after admitting its Centrino update, Montevina, would not appear till August at the earliest. * EC denies 'provisional decision' on Intel anti-trust probe * EU sets ambitious IPv6 target * CoolerMaster 900W PSU grabs top energy efficiency rating * Nvidia to acquire ray tracing startup * AMD to launch 'Puma' laptop platform next month * Intel to use Centrino 2 to promote solid-state drives * Lenovo undershoots Wall St as US disappoints * Cisco breaks cycle with IOS patch * Stone catches fallen Rock * Intel nudges Centrino 2 debut back Newsletter * Get the ChannelReg newsletters Related Whitepapers * The Register Guides: Managing Spam A primer on the implications for enterprise IT * Webcast : Why Today's Spam Filters Fail Watch on-line now * Live Migration with AMD-V(TM) Extended Migration Technology Live migration functionality works seamlessly across a broad range of AMD64 processors * Podcast : Why Today's Spam Filters Fail Listen or download now * Alternate Client Architectures An overview of alternative architectures to deliver applications to the desktop * The new way to defeat Spam Increasing productivity with Abaca Sponsored Links * Try HP PartnerONE's full menu of marketing tools * Meet the fast-growing demand for notebooks with HP * Join Nortel's Partner Program * Vendor Whitepapers - Download them free from Reg Research (c) Copyright 2008 * Privacy Policy * Advertising * Site Map * Contact Us * About Us * Syndication Quantcast